Saturday, September 10, 2016

On Thursday evening, the Versailles-Midway-Woodford County
Planning Commission recommended goals and objectives including the proposed
northwest Versailles bypass that could funnel traffic onto U.S. 62 and into
Midway.

With a 5-3 vote the commission approved the plan, which will
now go to the county’s
legislative bodies for deliberation. Midway Mayor Grayson Vandegrift is
planning a public forum in the coming weeks on the issue.

The bypass has long been a point of contention, and Midway
citizens and their government have voiced opposition to it.

Chad Wells, chair of the planning commission Comprehensive PlanCommittee, listens as Rich Schein, Midway's sole member on the
commission, speaks. At right is commission member Patty Perry.

Richard Schein, Midway’s sole representative on the
commission, made his argument against the bypass, arguing it should be put in
the comprehensive plan and left out of the goals and objectives. “Projects do
not belong in the goals and objectives” of the plan, he said.

Schein was not appointed to the subcommittee that drafted
the goals and objectives, drawing an objection from Vandegrift.

Schein was not the only member of the commission who
objected to the proposal.

Referring to this year's removal of the project from the state road plan, Commissioner Jim Boggs said,“This is a dead horse. Some people and some politicians want to wash its mane and
clean its tail out and make it think it’s still alive, but it ain’t.”

Boggs added that the addition of another four-lane highway in the county had
been discussed for 15 to 20 years with no success, and to promote it further
would put the commission in a “dumb” position.

Commission member Patty Perry said, “I don’t think the
extension of KY 2113 belongs in the goals and objectives.”

Schein argued that the commission should listen to public
opinion on the bypass because it is “charged as a public body.” He said two
public hearings and a community survey on the goals and objectives indicated
what the community wants.

“With the exception of three people persistently in the
public hearings, nobody spoke in favor of a bypass in the public record,”
Schein said.

Another argument against the bypass was keeping the
integrity of the county park it would bisect. “Look at all the entities that
are in there, and we want to build a four-lane highway down the middle of it?”
Boggs asked. “Look at how our park is expanding -- and we want to destroy it.”

Schein, a geography professor at the University of Kentucky,
said past engineering studies do not all support a bypass: “Those engineering
studies are ambiguous.” He said some of the studies are from the 1950s and
1960s when many American cities were building bypasses, but they regret it
today.

Schein did acknowledge that there is a traffic problem in
downtown Versailles. “This is the story of the hollowing out of American cities
. . . the building of bypasses across the country,” he said, adding that the
answer may a bypass southeast of Versailles instead.

Despite these objections, with the 5-3 vote the proposal
will move forward to the legislative bodies with the bypass language intact.
The Midway City Council can choose to adopt or leave out the bypass in the
proposal.

“We can adopt the goals and objectives as is but remove some
items that we don’t approve of,” Midway Mayor Grayson Vandegrift said in an
interview after the meeting. He said the council plans to hold a public forum
within the next three weeks to allow Midway citizens to voice their opinions on
the goals and objectives.

“They don’t have to
have the same version throughout the county,” said the commission’s legal
counsel, Tim Butler.

The goals and objectives provide the basis for final
planning and zoning decisions by the legislative bodies in their own
jurisdictions, but Midways sole rejection of the bypass would not affect the decisions made by
the city and county.

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News in and around the small but surprisingly interesting town of Midway, Ky., reported, written and photographed by students in community journalism classes in the University of Kentucky School of Journalism and Media, taught by Associate Extension Professor Al Cross, director of the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues,www.RuralJournalism.org.